Unvaccinated 82-year-old man becomes 10th fatality this month

An 82-year-old man died of complications due to Covid-19 infection on Thursday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said last night.

His is the 10th death to be recorded this month. The man developed symptoms on July 30, and was admitted to Alexandra Hospital after testing positive the next day.

He was unvaccinated, and had a history of heart disease, damage to the heart, kidney disease and high blood pressure.

In total, 47 people have died of Covid-19 complications.

Two new clusters have emerged. One is at a FairPrice supermarket in Kallang Bahru, with four cases, and the other is linked to an individual and has three cases.

A total of 40 new infections were detected yesterday, with locally transmitted ones numbering 36.

Of the local infections, 19 were linked to previous cases and those already quarantined, while another three linked cases were not in quarantine when they tested positive. The remaining 14 were unlinked.

Among the cases were two seniors aged above 70 who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, and are at risk of serious illness.

There were also four imported cases that were detected and placed on stay-home notice or isolated upon arrival in Singapore.

Three of these cases were detected upon arrival in Singapore, while one developed the illness during the stay-home notice period or isolation.

The latest cases bring Singapore's total to 66,406.

In its daily night update on the Covid-19 situation, MOH said nine clusters have been closed. With that, there are now 77 active clusters, with infections ranging from three to 1,155. This is the lowest number of active clusters since July 31.

MOH also said that the number of new cases in the community has fallen from 380 the week before to 281 in the past week. The number of unlinked cases has decreased from 99 to 84 in the same period.

Currently, 380 patients are in hospitals. Of them, 27 require oxygen supplementation, while seven are in critical condition in the intensive care unit.

Of the very ill, 27 are seniors aged above 60, and of them, 23 are unvaccinated or partially vac-cinated.

MOH said there is continuing evidence that almost all fully vaccinated individuals do not suffer serious disease when infected, unless they have underlying medi-cal conditions that make them more susceptible.

Over the past 28 days, the percentage of unvaccinated people who became severely ill or died was 9.2 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated was 1.7 per cent, it added.

On the country's vaccination progress, MOH said 77 per cent of Singapore's population is fully vaccinated as at Thursday, while 82 per cent have received at least one dose.

A total of 8,526,565 doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered under the national vaccination programme, covering 4,459,200 people, with 4,200,032 people having completed the full vaccination regimen.

In addition, 154,936 doses of other vaccines recognised in the World Health Organisation's Emergency Use Listing have been administered, covering 84,281 people.